The Avatar's Smile
by Kitakana
Summary: Azula is angry. She hates living a clean, white house full of healers. She loves to hate everything, especially a certain scrawny bald kid with a stupid tattoo on his head. But for some reason, he keeps coming to visit her. Azulaang one-shot.


**The Avatar's Smile**

**Summary: Azula is angry. She hates living a clean, white house full of healers. She loves to hate everything, especially a certain scrawny bald kid with a stupid tattoo on his head. But for some reason, he keeps coming to visit her. Azulaang.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own ATLA. If I did, Zutara would be cannon.**

Azula was angry. Azula was always angry these days. She hated it here. She hated the way everything was so clean and white, she hated that they treated her as if she were some kind of misbehaving child that needed constant supervision. She hated the way they watched her. Every day, it was exactly the same. They watched her and she waited.

She waited for people to come to visit her. A few people came at first, but now it was usually just her and the healers. Not that they did much. They only reminded her of things she couldn't do or had to do.

"We can't let you go outside, Azula, it wouldn't be safe for you."

"Eat all of you food, Azula."

"Lie down and go to sleep now, Azula."

"Don't forget to drink all of your special tea, Azula, you wouldn't want us to have to help you."

They were still forcing her to drink her special tea. Still, after four years, they forced her to take the tea with the horrible-tasting herbs that took away her bending. Zuko had said at the beginning that he let her take the tea as an act of kindness instead of having the Avatar take away her firebending permanently. She didn't believe his rationale. He would keep her in here until she died; she would never be able to firebend anyway.

Sometimes others came to visit. Zuko used to come from time to time. He came in the beginning to try to console her, to try to make her feel better. To give him credit, he did actually try.

He was fond of sitting and just talking to her while she listened, sitting stubbornly silent and glaring. Her silence did not faze him, he was quite good at giving monologues about all of the drama in his life. Not that there was as much drama now, but he would still go on and on about honor from time to time.

He would tell her about his progress ending the war, about everything he was rebuilding. She would listen silently for the most part, scowling at him. Then, inevitably, he would start talking about his little friends and his trusted gaang. He would talk about them like she wasn't even there, like he talked to her in order to mentally organize his fond memories about them.

He would talk about how ponytail boy was getting married to some earth kingdom peasant and Ty Lee was going to be a bridesmaid. He would talk about his mixed feelings about his on-and-off relationship with Mai (which was currently off, last Azula heard). He would talk about the earthbender girl and which boy she had beaten up most recently. He would tell stories the Avatar told him about the places he had visited. He would even tell stories about the lemur's new favorite fruit. But inevitably, finally, he would start talking about that water tribe peasant.

He would tell her how confusing he found the peasant, how he worried when she was upset because the Avatar was off on some rebuilding mission far away, how they had been practicing bending together a lot lately, how he had actually managed to procure sea prunes for her, how he had actually tried the sea prunes with her…

Typically, by the time Zuko reached this point in his ramblings, Azula had had enough. She would burst out with some scathing comment just to make him shut up about that bloody _peasant_.

"So this is why Mai keeps ditching you," she would say, or "Just sleep with her and get it over with already."

This always had her desired effect upon Zuko. He would get mad, say something inarticulate about her dating the Avatar, and storm off while muttering under his breath about upholding honor.

Zuko's visits had grown fewer as the years went by. Once every week had become once every month which had become once every few moths… it had been four moths since the last time Zuko had visited her.

But sometimes other people had come. Mai and Ty Lee had come by twice to see her. The first time, she had done rather a lot of yelling, but the second time, within the last year, she had limited herself to sarcastic, scything comments. Her uncle Iroh would come when he was in the fire nation, but he had been spending an increasing amount of time in Ba Sing Se, so he hadn't seen her in nearly as long as Zuko. Even the waterbending peasant that Zuko monologued about had come once, but she had left rather hurriedly once Azula started making crude insinuations about her and Zuko. That had been a good day, Azula smiled, remembering.

And then, all of a sudden, _he_ had started coming. She had already been here for three whole years before he came, but once he started, his visits followed a trend opposite from her other visitors. He had been coming to see her more and more frequently, that boy that she loved to hate. That scrawny bald kid with the dumb tattoo on his head, who just smiled cheekily at her and said stupid, consoling things to her. He would tell her he just wanted to make her happy. He kept coming, as he said, just to make sure she was doing all right.

Well, she wasn't doing all right! She was locked up in a mental institition surrounded by healers all the time. She couldn't go outside and she didn't have her firebending, the one thing that had made her _her_, anymore. No, she was not alright. She hated everything, especially him, the Avatar, who would not stop smiling unquenchably at her. The Avatar who, Zuko had told her, had wanted them to put her here in the first place rather than locking her up like her father. She would have preferred the cell to this place, really.

She had yelled rather a lot the first time he had come to visit her, hoping that he would stop. Of all of the people who had come to visit her up to that point, he was the most annoying, the hardest to faze with her scything comments.

Surprisingly, bewilderingly, he had not stopped coming. If anything, his visits had become more frequent. His second visit was a month after the first, then he came back three weeks later, then he two weeks after that. Now he came nearly every week to see her. It drove her mad. Well, mad_-er_.

He seemed to love just coming to see her, to talk to her. Once, he brought her a vase full of fire lilies as a present to cheer her up. That was going too far. She took the vase from his hands and threw it on the ground before his feet. Bits of glass and water spattered all over the white carpet and peppered the Avatar's feet with angry little red marks. She had wanted to shake his calm, his unrelenting happiness. It hadn't worked, although admittedly, he had flinched as the bits of glass bit into his ankles. That unshakable attitude of his was why she loved to hate him.

It was becoming a game for her, to see if she could shake his calm, his smile. His smile infuriated her. She couldn't stand the way nothing seemed to shake his confounded cheeriness. His obnoxious laughter, so happy and carefree, grated on her nerves. She wanted to break through his happy façade. She knew that he could show other emotions, she had seen him before the end of the war. She knew she must make it her goal to draw these other emotions out of him. She had looked forwards to the challenge.

And so she sat, drinking a cup of strong jasmine tea, when the healers ushered him into the room and then left, leaving her alone in the room with _him_.

"Good morning, Azula!" he said, beaming from ear to ear. "Did you miss me?"

"No. Stop smiling."

He didn't, of course. He never did. He usually would go on and on to her all of the fun things he had done recently, what new cute fuzzy animal he had found to play with, what things he had done with his friends that made him happy. Only, today was different. Usually he started out his long ramble about his friends by talking about what he and that waterbending peasant had accomplished on any given day. That had been part of his monologue routine. But today, he skipped that entirely. Once he started talking about how he and the lemur had gone flying on the bison thing, an activity usually only talked about in the context of things he did with that _peasant_, she started to become interested, despite herself.

"What, did she finally leave you for my brother?" Azula interjected.

The Avatar's smile flickered for just a moment before it went back in place. It was brief, but it happened and she saw it. Score one for Azula, she congratulated herself.

"No," he replied, still smiling. "I let her go a long time ago when I saw how upset she was about me being gone all of the time. I told her I would wait for her, and she said that one day, it might work out again. Like I said, that happened a long time ago."

Azula wasn't buying it. She knew that something had changed, something that could lead her closer to breaking away his smile.

"So, she did finally hook up with my brother." Azula stated, smirking at the Avatar.

The smile flickered again. Azula's smirk broadened. She had hit a nerve with the Avatar. He looked down at the ground. He was no longer smiling as much, she was pleased to note. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, he nodded.

"I knew she would never want you in the end."

"Azula, why did you say that?" He asked, sounding almost hurt. Almost. She was surprised and elated, usually her harsh comments didn't have any affect whatsoever.

"She always loved my brother. Everyone always has to love my brother." Azula stated, as if that much were obvious.

"Azula, who else loves your brother so much? I know you do, but surely not to that extreme." He replied. Trust him to come up with some statement that shifted the focus away from himself and his problems, she thought. She decided to humor him, to see just how much she could shrink his smile.

"My mother left me for Zuko. She killed my grandfather, got herself banished, and never even said goodbye to me, all to save my ungrateful brother's neck." Azula said sarcastically, hoping to force him to stop smiling.

It worked! His smile took on a more empathetic look, that is to say, it shrunk a bit.

"You know, I used to look to Katara as the mother I never had. I think that was why it bothered me so much when she told me flat out that she was dating Zuko. I should have realized it sooner." He smiled again, this time wryly. At least this was not strictly a happy smile. "So you and I do actually have something in common."

"No way, Avatar." Azula stated bluntly.

"Yes, we do," he replied, "we both lost our mothers to Zuko."

He was smiling at her now in an entirely different way. It was resigned, but hopeful. She hated it, but something about how kind it was drew her gaze. He was still smiling at her like an idiot, but for some reason, she couldn't bring herself to look away. So Azula scowled right back.

"That's why I like coming to visit you, Azula," he said. "I always know where I stand with you, you never shock me like Katara did, you never hurt me."

"That's not even true, Avatar, I threw a fucking vase at your feet."

"Well, I was kind of expecting that," he said, stepping closer to her, still smiling for some reason. "So, that's why your present today is not dangerously breakable!"

He had gotten her another present. Azula brought her hands up to her face, sighing, face-palm. He pulled something out of a fold in his robes. It was a single, vase-less fire lily.

Azula might have been taken off guard a little bit. It really was a pretty flower. That didn't stop her from throwing the flower back in his face as soon as he presented it to her. He laughed, he actually laughed, in that infuriatingly cheerful laugh, and he picked up the flower.

He picked up the flower, brushed it off, and broke off most of the stem. He leaned towards Azula, who surprised, did not move out of his way fast enough, and tucked it behind her ear in one, quick motion.

"You look so pretty, Princess Azula!" He exclaimed, smiling cheekily.

Azula grimaced and glared at him. She suddenly noticed that he was taller than she was. This irked her. When had this happened? She was the mighty Azula and he was just some twelve year old bald kid. Without thinking, she said as much.

"Azula, I'm sixteen! And yes, I'm taller than you!" He was whining, not really smiling! Score two for Azula. She smirked again. Unfortunately, the smile he had lost soon returned.

"And besides, you look so much prettier from higher up! Especially with that flower."

He was smiling unnervingly again and he was actually teasing her about her looks. When had he become so cheeky? No wait, when had he gotten this much cheekier? Azula wasn't sure what think of this new, even cheerier Avatar.

"Whatever you want, Avatar, spit it out." Azula commented.

"Well, I wouldn't really mind if you stopped calling me 'Avatar.' I have a name, you know."

"Spit it out, arrow-headed bald kid." Azula retorted.

"Not better. My name is Aang. You know that. Can you try to call me Aang?"

"Fine." Azula drawled, "Aang."

"That's better, Azula!" He was smiling again, the idiot. "Now that you can call me by my actual name, maybe we can be friends?"

Azula was mildly surprised by this statement. She had never had anyone ask for her friendship before. Sure, she had had friends. Mai and Ty Lee definitely counted, but they had never asked for her friendship. It was usually her seeking them out when she wanted partners in crime. And they hadn't visited her much since she had come here, their average of once per two-year period did not bode well. The Avatar, on the other hand, had actually shown up frequently. She could begrudgingly give him that much.

"No." Azula responded, bluntly.

"Well, maybe eventually we could be friends. I know some great places we could go to, do you remember those mail slides in Omashu? That would be so much fun, wouldn't it?

Yes, she remembered them, but the rest of his information really did shock her. He actually though she might get out one day. She had, by now, resigned herself to rot here for the rest of her life. But now here he was, telling her that she had a chance of escape.

"You'd get me out of this hellhole?" she asked, trying to look as if she were unfazed by this information.

"I think that with time, you would be fine outside. See? You're already getting better." He was smiling even more now, damn it. "In the last few minutes, you have accepted flowers from me, you have called me by my first name, and you didn't throw anything at me when I asked you to be my friend. You're actually acting happy today, Azula!"

He ran lightly forwards and hugged her. Azula was caught off guard. She was baffled. What the hell was he doing?

"Let go of me, damn it, Aang!" She yelled.

"You called me Aang, you really don't hate me!" For some reason, he didn't want to let go of her. He looked down at her, still with his arms wrapped firmly around her. "You've made so much progress today, Azula. I'm really proud of you."

Azula looked up into his eyes, struggling half-heartedly to get out of his grasp. He really had grown a lot. Now she could start making fun of him for being manly and childish, she thought, always looking for something to add to her scything comment bank. And he was smiling again, damn it.

"Thank you, Azula," He said sweetly. Before Azula could squirm away, the Avatar leaned forwards and kissed her lightly on the mouth. For the briefest moment, Azula melted into the kiss. Then she remembered reality.

She stepped backwards, wrenching herself out of his arms and in one quick movement, her fist connected with his jaw.

"Ow, 'Zula." He mumbled, staggering backwards and grinning cheekily.

"Get out of my sight." Azula ordered.

"Alright, but I'll come back soon! Don't miss me too much!"

He smiled unquenchably back at her, and then turned and skipped from the room.

Azula was angry. She was angry that she was stuck here, angry at herself for enjoying the Avatar's presence, angry at the wilting fire lily still tucked in her hair. But most of all, she was angry at the Avatar. Oh, she was really starting to love hating him. She couldn't wait for his next visit so that she could hate him some more.

**A/N: This is my contribution to the wonderful crackship of Azulaang. In my opinion, there are not nearly enough fics out there with this ship. I have found so few instances of this ship being done well that I guess I just got bored and decided to write one for myself. **

**I hope everyone enjoyed reading this! Please write a review and let me know what you think!**


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